PRESS RELEASE
16.07.2015
Museum of Tyrolean Farms
Scenography for an Outdoor Museum
An idyllic landscape and 37 historic buildings draw around 70,000 visitors a year to the Museum of Tyrolean Farms in Kramsach, Austria. "Here, you can take a walk through the whole of Tyrol and discover its fascinating history", says museum director Dr. Thomas Bertagnolli. To mark its 40 years of existence, the outdoor museum has treated itself to a new guidance system and a completely new narrative structure. The opening date is the 26th of July.
For the 8.5 hectare site, ATELIER BRÜCKNER has developed a consistent scenographic language that plays its part respectfully while emphasising specific optical features and notable aspects of the content. "We breathe life into the historic buildings and landscape with a narration, thus enabling them to exert a longer-lasting effect", says Uwe R. Brückner, creative director of ATELIER BRÜCKNER. "The scene is set with the help of four themes that make the past more tangible and more alive to the visitor: landscape, economic system, community and rulership."
Invitingly translucent and made of squared larch wood, a pavilion is dedicated to each particular theme and serves as a point of contact and orientation in the extensive grounds of the museum. It offers an overview and a look out onto the 'exhibits', directing the eye towards particular sections of the landscape while explaining their relationship to the history. The play of light and shadow within the austere pavilion exudes a special allure. It symbolically stands for the interleaving of the themes with what is shown in the surrounding area. The themes themselves are presented on attached aluminium panels.
The highly expressive design language of the pavilion architecture matches the museum's guidance system. It accompanies the visitor on the 3.2 kilometre-long tour and awakes his enthusiasm for the historical contents associated with the buildings along the way. Signposts, general maps and information steles are placed at a respectful distance away from the farms, which were all built between 1550 and 1720. The wood chosen corresponds to the building material of the farms and thus remains visually in the background, whereas the angular shape and the coloured accents of the information graphics attract the necessary attention. A dialogue thus takes place between historical and contemporary vocabularies of form.
In the farms, the themes of the pavilions are shown as living history. Film projections insert themselves into the interiors. Individual protagonists provide evidence of their past life and, with their personal stories and authentic experience, give the visitor an insight into a culture of living with which we today are unfamiliar. For example, at the Trujer-Gregörler farmhouse, a building from the middle of the 16th century, two brothers explain the effects that the law of inheritance will have on them. Each of the sons will only receive a share; the land is thus divided into smaller and smaller areas, as is shown by the divided Trujer-Gregörler farm itself.
Join-in stations at the farms invite children to discover the main themes for themselves playfully and interactively. With the help of a set of scales, for example, they can find out how the system of divided inheritance of land worked, while a wheel of fortune illustrates the single-inheritor law. As a result, they feel that they are being addressed personally.
The entrance building of the museum provides information on the translocation and restoration of the farms. Here, the history of the museum since it was founded in 1974 is presented. The original locations of the farms are marked on a map of Tyrol, which is spread out on the floor in the middle of the room as a walk-on map. Models of farms are linked to this floor map and show details of the buildings in three dimensions.
The new scenography joins all the elements of the museum together to form a consistent experience. The visitor thus perceives the extensive museum area as a unified presentation through which he is guided. On the way, he is immersed in history in a light-footed tour of the past.
Contact
ATELIER BRÜCKNER GmbH
Claudia Luxbacher, Press and Public Relations
M. +49 176 21824390
Museum Tiroler Bauernhöfe
Dr. Thomas Bertagnolli, Museum Director
Angerberg 10
6233 Kramsach | Austria
T. +43 5337 62636
www.museum-tb.at
MMag. Gabriele Grießenböck, Press Contact Museum
T. + 43 0676 83521617